Usable for people shots: an understatement

It may be self-indulgent to quote myself, but perhaps an element of self-mockery may help? In my last post, about the loaned pancake lens, I said its focal length made it

a classic landscape perspective while also being usable for people shots.

I think I'm ready to eat my words: the informal portrait may be, above all, its greatest strength. Today we had a visit from friends and family including the lovely Libby, who is ages with grand-daughter Amy. Here is Amy using Flight Control to land aircraft on the iPad:

The girls are into new technology, and in what follows you may recognise an iPad in Amy's hands and an iPhone in Libby's: how like Amy to secure the larger screen! But what I love about these images is the way that through their body language they are engaging in unconscious echoing, while each is utterly absorbed in her own device.

Of course I could have tried to capture such images with many other cameras, lenses, or even a mobile phone. But in practice, without such a light, unobtrusive, fast lens, I don't think I'd even have tried. They were sitting in a dark rumpled corner, taken against strong natural window light which is burned out below. But any photographic intervention would have destroyed the moment:

[handheld, no flash, f4 with 1/30th and one full stop of exposure compensation]